[grenier]

Bonjour Lal,
I am not familiar with the forum’s rules and the way to continue the discussion on a subject ; I will try to stay on ”Buddha and humor” . About your answers in posts # 31652 and #31656 , you are right about sutta, it is a serious matter; I brought Thanissaro Bhikkhu comments ( like the one he did on Kevatta Sutta DN 11…:”The tale that concludes the discourse is one of the finest examples of the early Buddhist sense of humor”) and questioning myself, is this an example of humor and irreverence in Buddhist scriptures? …like ”The ten funniest scenes from the Pali Canon” on Sujato’Blog…And in Theravada/Early Buddhism, the ”jokes” that Gombrich found are considered to be the oldest and most authentic in the Pali texts because jokes can’t be ”created by committee”…some versions of the Vinaya included a rule against joking about the triple gem…this rule is found in the orgin story to Sekhiya 51, and it imposes a so-called dukkata offence for making a joke about the Buddha, Dhamma or Sangha. Is it Buddha who did lay it down?…if not, then it is not really binding on the Sangha; but the Dhamma is clearly a serious matter. It would be irresponsible to poke fun at the Dhamma in such a way that people lose their respect for it. There is a fine line between reasonable merrymaking and degradation of the Dhamma and I am not sure it is possible to make any hard and fast judgement as to what is acceptable and what is not…this world of ours is so full of grey areas! Thanks for your lights, Grenier